45 pages • 1 hour read
Maggie O'FarrellThe Hand That First Held Mine
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Motherhood in Maggie O’Farrell’s Fiction
Maggie O’Farrell is best known for her novel Hamnet, which explores the historical experience of motherhood through the lens of Shakespeare’s wife. The sense of The Universality of Motherhood is a recurring theme in O’Farrell’s work, including The Hand That First Held Mine. In an interview following the publication of her memoir I Am I Am I Am, O’Farrell describes motherhood as an “ancient undertow of biology”—a remark that depicts the astonishment, worry, trauma, and transformative quality of motherhood as innate and involuntary (“Motherhood with Giovanna Fetcher and Maggie O’Farrell.” The Waterstones Podcast, 26 Feb. 2020). In The Hand That First Held Mine Elina finds her identity and mooring in reality challenged by becoming a mother. A half century earlier, Lexie likewise discovers a key aspect of her identity in motherhood, which she describes as, “our hearts begin[ning] to live outside our bodies” (241)—a phrase O’Farrell uses again in the 2020 Waterstones podcast on Hamnet. There are eight distinct mothers in The Hand That First Held Mine, representing both variations and connections between women in different times and different locations. Even Margot, who is not Ted’s biological mother, experiences the sense of primal connection that Lexis articulates, and the novel’s title is itself an homage to the connection and love between a mother and child.
O’Farrell herself is the mother of three children. Like Lexie, she spent the early part of her career as a journalist, primarily covering the art world. Like Elina, O’Farrell began her family after she began making her own art—novels—full time, requiring that she balance the needs of her children with the drive to write and create. The experience of being a mother and a professional figures prominently throughout The Hand That First Held Mine, where both Lexie and Elina maintain their careers while keeping their young sons close. O’Farrell credits her daughter reading over her shoulder with inspiring her to venture into children’s literature, which is reminiscent of Lexie bringing Theo to Ireland for an interview and of Elina bringing the napping baby into her art studio (Haydock, Sophie. “Maggie O’Farrell: Kids and Middle Ages.” Big Issue North, 11 Dec. 2020). O’Farrell’s protagonists fold motherhood in with their careers in the same ways that she has combined her identity as a writer with her identity as a mother.
Sociocultural Context: Feminism in Mid-20th-Century London
The second wave of the feminist movement began in the United States in roughly 1963 with the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which challenged the societal understanding of women’s identity as intertwined with homemaking as a wife and mother. Feminism as a social movement in England, especially London, typically followed on the heels of feminist activism in the United States. In the early 20th century, for example, first wave feminism in the US culminated in the 1919 attainment of women’s suffrage, but it was not until 1928 that English women secured the right to vote. Similarly, success in the mid-20th-century women’s liberation movement, which fought for economic equality, access to birth control and contraceptive education, and the legalization of abortion, was just beginning in late 1960s England—the time and place where Lexie Sinclair gives birth to her son Theo out of wedlock and buys a house.
More than half of The Hand That First Held Mine is set in mid-20th-century London and centers around Lexie, who embodies many of the ideals of second wave feminism. Lexie refuses to apologize for using a men’s only door at her university and is expelled as a result. She pursues a career in journalism and refuses to get married even when she discovers she is pregnant. Lexie is a single mother who is financially independent and continues her career while caring for her son. Just as importantly, Lexie insists on being taken seriously and on her own terms. While in labor, she corrects every nurse or doctor who refers to her as “Mrs.” rather than “Miss” Sinclair. As a writer, she is incensed when her work is described with reference to her gender. She refuses to acquiesce to societal expectations or to change because of family or romantic pressure. When she moves in with Innes Kent, her family disowns her, and she accepts that. When Felix pressures her to marry him, she refuses repeatedly—even after she becomes pregnant and even after her son is born.
Lexie Sinclair, or the women she represents, blazes a trail for women like Elina Vilkuna. In 21st-century London, Elina has no second thoughts about or challenges in raising a child without being married. No one refers to her as Mrs. Roffe or Mrs. Vilkuna, and only Margot even suggests that Elina should give Jonah Ted’s last name. Elina can work while having a child, and she can expect Ted to be an equal partner in parenting. Lexie is not a feminist activist, and she doesn’t cover specifically feminist topics in her journalism. Even so, O’Farrell has clearly integrated feminist issues into Lexie’s story and rendered her a feminist pioneer.
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